One of the things I like about podcasting with these gentlemen is how it's a reasonably casual conversation about MMO topics of the day. That said, the new and popular short format (we covered all of that and more in under 35 minutes) does take some mental preparation, and I'm definitely appalled at how many vocal pauses I managed to fit into such a short time.

A few bonus comments that didn't make it into the show one way or another:

EA's quarterly earnings call confirmed that SWTOR is below half a million subscribers, which would make it the number three subscription MMO in the west behind WoW and Eve... before you count all the cash store revenue. Players may or may not like the direction that future development takes, but I don't think there's much question in the short term that they're making money.

To clarify a comment I made on the show, I would hope that no one who backed Camelot Unchained is going to be surprised or impatient that the game is going to take two years to launch (which was clearly stated). The point I was trying to make is how much patience players will need to have if we get to mid-2015 and the game still needs work. There will be no possibility of delaying the launch because they won't have the money to keep paying their staff. Meanwhile, thousands of people will have been playing the game in pre-alpha and alpha for over a year, many of them paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars to be allowed to do so.

If people aren't happy with what they're seeing by the middle of the beta, will they be patient, urge folks to keep the faith, and remain subscribed when the game launches (assuming they haven't already paid for lifetime subscriptions)? Or will word of mouth take a sharp and unforgiving turn for the worse? This is not a title that can afford to have its early adopters burned out or disillusioned before the game launches, and they will have to make the project work in an unusually public fashion due to how much access they sold as Kickstarter rewards.

Subscribe

About Player Versus Developer

I'm what they call a "WoW Tourist" - WoW was my first MMO, and being able to set my own schedule is a dealbreaker. At any given time, I can be found ducking in and out of half a dozen different MMO's.

This blog details some of my own personal exploits, but it also focuses on a meta-gaming issue that I find very interesting - the decisions developers make on how to reward player activity, and the decisions players make in response to maximize their own rewards.